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<\/a> This is her high school picture, \u201cWhat a Babe!\u201d. My Dad figured this out and married her where he got the best end of the deal. Mom was an industrious woman but with one interesting note: she never learned to drive a car. In those days, a teenager did not automatically get a car on their 16th birthday. People were broke back then but not \u201cpoor\u201d. Dad had to borrow some money just to get married, $25, I think.<\/p>\nBefore I was born, Mom went to clean my dad\u2019s mother\u2019s house for her. My brother was two and she had no transportation. Grandma evidently did not have a vacuum cleaner so Mom walked to her house with my brother and a vacuum cleaner in tow. She would carry my brother a few hundred feet then go back and get the vacuum cleaner left behind. Mom was enterprising with the \u201ccards she was dealt\u201d. Eventually she arrived at Grandma\u2019s and cleaned the house. Yep, the return trip required the same energy. Her Love Language was \u201cacts of service\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mom made the best of the situation we were in. When I was three, we could not afford turkey at Thanksgiving so we had chicken noodle soup and were told it was turkey. It tasted fine to me!<\/p>\n
Things started improving in the mid 1950\u2019s and we moved to Midwest City where I grew up. We were the classic \u201cLeave it to Beaver\u201d household. The TV series was easy to identify with. Dad worked and Mom stayed at home and managed her two sons,,, who needed managing. Mom was the moral compass of the family. More than once would she washed out our mouths with soap when we tried out our wings with \u201ccuss\u201d words. Though we didn\u2019t know what they meant, we figured out that Mom didn\u2019t like it. She didn\u2019t curse, smoke, or drink. She was truly a handmaiden.<\/p>\n
As my brother and I participated in most all sports, Mom was always involved. She was the scorekeeper for my baseball team. Her black eye from a foul ball was her badge of honor. After that, she always sat behind the backstop out of harm\u2019s way. She would walk us down to the local swimming pool 5 blocks from the house for swimming lessons. She would walk us to school (the same 5 blocks) everyday until each of us was old enough to make the trek on our own. We walked everywhere during the week. My brother\u2019s drum lessons? No problem! Mom and my brother would take turns carrying the snare drum to the practice. The drum case was too big for me at the time. It seemed like it took forever to get to our destination. Mom generated extra income by baby-sitting. In the summer, we would have a house full of kids. It made for a good baseball game everyday in the street. More than one of these kids knew the Love Mom dished out. She practically raised a few of them.<\/p>\n